The marketing of bottled beverages in quantities of six or more has become popular with the consuming public. In addition, for reasons of ecology and the conservation of raw material, it has become customary for the seller to require the purchaser of the bottled beverage to pay a bottle-deposit, thereby providing an incentive for the purchaser to return the bottles when empty. Because of these merchandising practices and for the convenience of the customer, it is important that the bottle carriers provide comfort, convenience, and safety for the customer when initially handling same, and that the carriers are capable of being subsequently used by the customer to facilitate return of the empty bottles.
Various carriers have heretofore been provided in an effort to meet these objectives; however, because of certain inherent design characteristics they have been beset with one or more of the following shortcomings: (1) they were of complex and costly construction and difficult to set up; (2) they were difficult not only to set up, but also to load with automatic high-speed equipment; (3) they provided ineffective protection for the accommodated bottles and contents thereof during normal handling of the loaded carrier; (4) the handles of the carriers interfered with proper and stable stacking of loaded carriers during storage and bulk shipping thereof; (5) the carriers were awkward and uncomfortable to manually carry; (6) it was necessary to substantially mutilate or deface the carrier in order to remove an article therefrom, thereby seriously impairing the reusability of the carrier; (7) the carriers were inherently weak and incapable of accommodating a variety of articles; and (8) they were formed from blanks utilizing an inordinate amount of blank material.